Expansion, renovation of Ronald McDonald House planned

Monday

A $1.2 million expansion and renovation project at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Illinois is scheduled to kick off in June and last four months.

For almost nine months, Springfield's Ronald McDonald House has helped Katie Alsup and her fiance, Justin Jones, save time, money and emotional energy after their daughter was born 17 weeks premature in June.

“I don't know what we would have done if we couldn't stay here,” Alsup said Monday while sitting in the kitchen of the house at 610 N. Seventh St. “The gas alone would have eaten us alive.”

Alsup, 34, lives a 50-minute drive away, in the Logan County community of Chestnut, with her fiance, a 33-year-old truck driver. Being able to stay for free at the Ronald McDonald House helps her be able to spend time every day with her daughter, Lyndie Jones, a patient in the neonatal intensive-care unit at St. John's Hospital.

More than 400 families stay at Ronald McDonald House each year, but not all families visiting Springfield for their children's medical care are so fortunate.

Because of the growth of Springfield's medical industry, and the growing number of children receiving care at St. John's Children's Hospital and other medical facilities over the past three years, Ronald McDonald House often is full. It has no choice but to turn away and suggest alternative accommodations for some families two out of every three nights.

To avoid that situation, a $1.2 million expansion and renovation project at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Illinois is scheduled to kick off in June and last four months. The organization has saved up $700,000 of the total and hopes to raise $500,000 more through its recently launched “Labor of Love” campaign.

“We've been good stewards of our funds, but we need to upgrade to serve more families,” executive director Kelly Thompson said. “When you serve thousands of families, the building gets some wear and tear.”

Two more bedrooms

The one-story house's first major renovation since its completion 28 years ago won't add to the current 12,700 square feet but involves “a complete reconfiguration of existing space,” Thompson said.

The project will add two bedrooms to the current total of 12, creating space for dozens of additional families each year.

Included in the renovations will be an improvement in the heating and air-conditioning system, a source of complaints among guests because of uneven temperatures in parts of the building.

Springfield's Ronald McDonald House provides free lodging and food to families who live at least a 40-minute drive away and have relatives up to age 21 receiving care in Springfield.

About 70 percent of guests stay one to seven nights. The remaining 30 percent might stay three, six or as many as nine months, Thompson said.

“It's a very unique need we're serving that no other charity in Springfield serves,” she said. “We're here to alleviate as much of the non-medical stress as we can.”

The house provides a well-stocked pantry with donated canned goods and other food for families. Refrigerators are stocked with food that the house's guest families can help themselves to for breakfast or lunch.

Church groups and other volunteers bring in or cook dinners for the guests. The leftovers are kept cold for snacking all day or night.

Many of the guests are mothers of babies in the St. John's NICU, and many pump breast milk that is stored in a big freezer in the basement of Ronald McDonald House and then brought to the NICU to be fed to their children.

Donated funds

The house is staffed 24 hours a day. A full-time staff of four, in addition to nine part-timers and more than 1,000 volunteers keep the organization running.

The house has a budget of more than $600,000 a year, with about $200,000 coming from donation boxes set up in the drive-throughs and on the counters of 100 McDonald's restaurants throughout central Illinois.

The rest of the money comes from other donations from individuals and businesses, and from special fundraisers and in-store campaigns at area McDonald's locations.

Families that Ronald McDonald House has to turn away are offered a reduced rate for lodging at Carpenter Street Hotel, 525 N. Sixth St.

St. John's is part-owner of Carpenter Street Hotel, according to Thompson. That's where up to six guest families of Ronald McDonald House will stay each night while the construction work takes place, she said.

By that time, Katie Alsup hopes to be home in Chestnut with her daughter, Lyndie.

Lyndie was born at St. John's on June 20, 2013, weighing only 1 pound, 5 ounces. She now weighs 16 pounds. Her mother hopes Lyndie can be weaned off a feeding tube and a tracheostomy tube soon.

Lyndie's condition, which at first made doctors question her chances for survival, has improved so much that she may be released in the next two weeks, her mother said.

‘Second family'

Having a room at Ronald McDonald House helped Alsup juggle visits to St. John's with her job as a nursing technician at Memorial Medical Center — until Alsup fell at her Chestnut home in January and broke her right collar bone.

Surviving on one income — from her fiance — while Alsup recovers has made it even more important for the family to keep expenses down. Having a free place to stay, across the street from St. John's, has been convenient and one less thing to worry about, she said.

Alsup said she is grateful for her employer's health insurance, which covered her own premature labor costs and part of Lyndie's medical bills. Some of Lyndie's medical bills, which Alsup estimated will total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, are being covered by Illinois' Medicaid program.

She said her relatives have donated meals and money to Ronald McDonald House in appreciation for the help the family has received.

The assistance from Ronald McDonald House has been more than financial, however.

Alsup said she has enjoyed the moral support she and her fiance have received from the other guests — stressed-out parents like them. And Alsup has become close with the house's staff.

“They really do become kind of your second family,” she said. “It's been a blessing. That doesn't even sum it up. ”

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